TWITTER: Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. While the service itself costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.
The 140-character limit on message length was initially set for compatibility with SMS messaging, and has brought to the web the kind ofshorthand notation and slang commonly used in SMS messages. The 140 character limit has also spurred the usage of URL shorteningservices such as tinyurl, bit.ly and tr.im, and content hosting services, such as Twitpic and NotePub to accommodate multimedia content and text longer than 140 characters.
Twitter emphasized their news and information network strategy in November 2009 by changing the question it asks users for status updates from "What are you doing?" to "What's happening?".[5][6] Twitter is ranked as one of the 50 most popular websites worldwide byAlexa'sweb traffic analysis.[7] Although estimates of the number of daily users vary because the company does not release the number of active accounts, a February 2009 Compete.com blog entry ranked Twitter as the third most used social network[8] based on their count of 6 million unique monthly visitors and 55 million monthly visits.[8] In March 2009, a Nielsen.com blog ranked Twitter as the fastest-growing site in the Member Communities category for February 2009. Twitter had a monthly growth of 1,382 percent, Zimbio of 240 percent, followed by Facebook with an increase of 228 percent.[9] However, only 40 percent of Twitter's users are retained.[10] (from Wikipedia, 2009).
****FACEBOOK:****
Facebook is a free-access social networking website where users can post photos and videos, share links, show event calendars, start or join groups around a specific topic, etc. Users set the level of privacy for the information they post on Facebook, ie. only approved friends can see your information, friends of friends can see it, or it’s public. Most social facebook pages are friends only, and businesses tend to set it at friends-of- friends for broader reach.
The benefits of Facebook are that you can share a LOT of information with a LOT of people very easily and with a minimum amount of work, you can keep track of what your ‘friends’ are doing via their status updates, and you can advertise events and track RSVPs through the invitation function.
When you give access to someone they can post publicly on YOUR wall of comments, so be careful about what level of access you provide.
****BLOGGING:****
Blogging, or online journaling, is the most commonly known tool for networking and communicating with others. Blogging is not private – the very function of it is to push content out into the Internet and get it passed around, syndicated (RSS = Really Simple Syndication), linked to, even excerpted and linked to. Blogging is where you tell the story of you and your issue, because blogging is a one-to- one connection and it’s about the human contact.
Social Network Tools:
TWITTER:
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. While the service itself costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.
The 140-character limit on message length was initially set for compatibility with SMS messaging, and has brought to the web the kind ofshorthand notation and slang commonly used in SMS messages. The 140 character limit has also spurred the usage of URL shorteningservices such as tinyurl, bit.ly and tr.im, and content hosting services, such as Twitpic and NotePub to accommodate multimedia content and text longer than 140 characters.
Twitter emphasized their news and information network strategy in November 2009 by changing the question it asks users for status updates from "What are you doing?" to "What's happening?".[5][6] Twitter is ranked as one of the 50 most popular websites worldwide byAlexa's web traffic analysis.[7] Although estimates of the number of daily users vary because the company does not release the number of active accounts, a February 2009 Compete.com blog entry ranked Twitter as the third most used social network[8] based on their count of 6 million unique monthly visitors and 55 million monthly visits.[8] In March 2009, a Nielsen.com blog ranked Twitter as the fastest-growing site in the Member Communities category for February 2009. Twitter had a monthly growth of 1,382 percent, Zimbio of 240 percent, followed by Facebook with an increase of 228 percent.[9] However, only 40 percent of Twitter's users are retained.[10] (from Wikipedia, 2009).
****FACEBOOK:****
Facebook is a free-access social networking website where users can post photos and videos, share links, show event calendars, start or join groups around a specific topic, etc. Users set the level of privacy for the information they post on Facebook, ie. only approved friends can see your information, friends of friends can see it, or it’s public. Most social facebook pages are friends only, and businesses tend to set it at friends-of- friends for broader reach.
The benefits of Facebook are that you can share a LOT of information with a LOT of people very easily and with a minimum amount of work, you can keep track of what your ‘friends’ are doing via their status updates, and you can advertise events and track RSVPs through the invitation function.
When you give access to someone they can post publicly on YOUR wall of comments, so be careful about what level of access you provide.
****BLOGGING:****
Blogging, or online journaling, is the most commonly known tool for networking and communicating with others. Blogging is not private – the very function of it is to push content out into the Internet and get it passed around, syndicated (RSS = Really Simple Syndication), linked to, even excerpted and linked to. Blogging is where you tell the story of you and your issue, because blogging is a one-to- one connection and it’s about the human contact.